Seijun Suzuki | WatchedThis
Seijun Suzuki
Directing
Biography
Seijun Suzuki born Seitaro Suzuki (24 May 1923 – 13 February 2017) was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are renowned by film enthusiasts worldwide for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, nihilistic cool and entertainment-over-logic sensibility. He made 40 predominately B-movies for the Nikkatsu Company between 1956 and 1967, working most prolifically in the yakuza genre. His increasingly surreal style began to draw the ire of the studio in 1963 and culminated in his ultimate dismissal for what is now regarded his magnum opus, Branded to Kill (1967), starring notable collaborator Joe Shishido. Suzuki successfully sued the studio for wrongful dismissal, but he was blacklisted for 10 years after that. As an independent filmmaker, he won critical acclaim and a Japanese Academy Award for his Taishō Trilogy, Zigeunerweisen (1980), Kagero-za (1981) and Yumeji (1991). His films remained widely unknown outside of Japan until a series of theatrical retrospectives beginning in the mid 1980s, home video releases of key films such as Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter in the late 1990s and tributes by such acclaimed filmmakers as Jim Jarmusch, Takeshi Kitano, Wong Kar-wai and Quentin Tarantino signaled his international discovery. Suzuki has continued making films, albeit sporadically. In Japan, he is more commonly recognized as an actor for his numerous roles in Japanese films and television. He passed away on February 13th, 2017. Description above from the Wikipedia article Seijun Suzuki, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Filmography Movies
Acting
What's a Director?
Works commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of Japan mapping Supervision Association
The Wings of Hakenkreuz
When a man who as a student wanted to burn down his school meets a man years later, his new friend falls in love with the former female class-mate who herself is in love with the would-be arsonist.
Discontinuous Bombing Incident
What is the clue that connects the police dormitory bombing case & Keihin canal murder case with the corporate bombing case 17 years ago? Detective Tamori chases a mystery!
Cold Fever
A Japanese businessman travels to Iceland and has a series of misadventures while venturing to a remote area to perform a traditional burial ritual where his parents died several years back.
Yurika-chan
An exciting 'psychic movie' starring Kanako Enomoto, adapted from the manga series by Yukio Tamai. Police detectives searching for clues related to a serial murder case seek out help from high schooler Yurika, who possesses latent split personality psychic abilities. The mystery deepens once Yurika is brought face-to-face with the crime scenes.
Sleepless Town
Kenichi is a half-Japanese, half-Chinese man of the underworld. You can sell him anything except children's organs. His domain is in Kabukicho, a gangland controlled by various Shanghai gangs intent on taking control. His former partner-in-crime, Fu-Chun, is rumored to have returned to Kabukicho, having fled years earlier after killing the number two of gangland boss, Yuan. Yuan wants to get even and attempts to do so by using Kenichi.
Milocrorze: A Love Story
Three tales of love told through wildly intoxicating, colorful stories. When platinum redhead Ovreneli Vreneligare was just a little boy, he fell in love in the park. Sharing a juice box with the stunningly gorgeous Milocrorze, he took her home to his cat, Verandola Gorgonzola, and made her his girlfriend until the fickle beauty abandoned him, and he covered the hole in his heart with a pot lid he found lying on the ground. This is only the beginning of his story but it’s not the end of his heartbreak. MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY is a candy-flavored anthology of hopeless l’amour, and it has many victims.
Double Bed
Kato is a small time TV producer. He has a wife Masako, and a young son Taro. Kato also has a friend Yamazaki who he knew since college. Yamazaki has a girl friend Riko who lives with her younger sister Yuko who's an actress. Yamazaki is a lyric writer/womanizer and he starts to have an affair with Masako, but he's still going out with Riko.
MOMENT
Pocky, an upbeat high-schooler, is told she will die in three days by a psychic whose predictions always come true. Along the way, she talks about boyfriends with her two friends, meets a strange boy with heart disease, and regularly bumps into a serial bomber.
Black Jack 2: Pinoko I Love You
A difficult request brought to the unlicensed genius surgeon Black Jack. It was supposed to be born as twins, but it was an operation to separate what had been taken into another body. The second in a series depicting the episode of the birth of Pinoko.
Production
The Claws of the Divine Beast
Based on a mystery by Taiwanese-Japanese author Chin Shun-shin. After two elderly men in Yokohama quarrel over a Tang dynasty artifact, one of the men turns up dead with mysterious claw marks across his face. A detective takes up the case, and uncovers secrets dating back to war crimes committed during Japan’s invasion of China in WWII.
Lupin the Third: The Legend of the Gold of Babylon
Lupin squares off with two criminal families and Inspector Zenigata's new female patrol to track down a hoard of biblical-era treasure.
Fighting Elegy
Kiroku boards with a Roman Catholic family and falls for the daughter Michiko. He ignores his feelings, joins a gang, gets in fights and, eventually, becomes involved with the radical Kita Ikki group.
Kanto Wanderer
Handsome young Katsuta tries to follow the yakuza code, but even his boss doesn't believe in it. Diamond Fuyu is less ethical, and allows the idiotic Tetsu to trick a schoolgirl he fancies, Hanako, into a type of bonded prostitution. Because of gang conflict, the Izu family (to whom Katsuta belongs) has their last gambling den taken over, and he seeks revenge. This brings him back into contact with a former lover who is also a card trickster - she is also Diamond Fuyu's sister, and is now married to Okaru-Hachi, who has mastered a clever card cheating trick called Okaru, which involves the deft use of mirrors.
Underworld Beauty
The moment he's released from prison, the honorable gangster Miyamoto recovers the stolen diamonds he had stashed before getting pinched. When he returns to his haunt to make good by friend who took a bullet for him, he is diverted by the greedy boss Oyane and his insatiable taste for Miyamoto's precious stones.
Pistol Opera
An assassin fends off numerous attacks from her comrades, who are trying to move up in rank by killing off the competition.
Princess Raccoon
Amechiyo (the banished prince) falls in love with Tanukihime (a princess of raccoon dog disguised as human). This is an operetta which includes comedy, singing and dancing, and a love story.
Tokyo Drifter
After yakuza boss Kurata dissolves his own criminal empire, a rival kingpin offers a position to Kurata's top operative, Tetsuya "Phoenix Tetsu" Hondo. When the fiercely loyal Tetsu declines, Otsuka taps unstoppable Tatsuzo the "Viper", a ruthless gun-for-hire, to assassinate him. As the Viper trails his target through the countryside, the agile Phoenix Tetsu grows concerned that one of his former associates has betrayed him.
Youth of the Beast
When a mysterious stranger muscles into two rival yakuza gangs, Tokyo's underworld explodes with violence.
Story of a Prostitute
Volunteering as a "comfort woman" on the Manchurian front, where she is expected to service hundreds of soldiers, Harumi is commandeered by the brutal Lieutenant Narita but falls for the sensitive Mikami, Narita's direct subordinate. Seijun Suzuki's Story of a Prostitute is a tragic love story as well as a rule-bending take on a popular Taijiro Tamura novel, challenging military and fraternal codes of honor, as seen through Harumi's eyes.
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